Lincoln, the unknown

by Tom Clancy

  But Mary refused to listen.

  Lincoln, after weeks of trying to screw up his courage to tell her the painful truth, came into Speed's store one night, walked back to the fireplace, drew a letter out of his pocket, and asked Speed to read it. Speed relates:

  The letter was addressed to Mary Todd, and in it he made a plain statement of his feelings, telling her that he had thought the matter over calmly and with great deliberation, and now felt that he did not love her sufficiently to warrant her in marrying him. This letter he desired me to deliver. Upon my declining to do so he threatened to intrust it to some other person's hand. I reminded him that the moment he placed the letter in Miss Todd's hand, she would have the advantage over him. "Words are forgotten," I said, "misunderstood, unnoticed in a private conversation, but once put your words in writing and they

  stand a living and eternal monument against you." Thereupon I threw the unfortunate letter in the fire.

  So we shall never know precisely what Lincoln said to her; but "we can form a good idea of what he wrote to Mary Todd," says Senator Beveridge "by again reading his final letter to Miss Owens."

  The story of Lincoln's affair with Miss Owens can be told briefly. It had occurred four years earlier. She was a sister of Mrs. Bennett Abell, whom Lincoln knew in New Salem. In the autumn of 1836 Mrs. Abell returned to Kentucky to visit her family, saying that she would bring her sister back to Illinois with her if Lincoln would agree to marry her.

  Lincoln had seen the sister three years before, and he said all right; and presto! the sister appeared. She had a beautiful face, refinement, education, and wealth; but Lincoln didn't want to marry her. He thought "she was a trifle too willing." Besides, she was a year older than he, and short and very corpulent— "a fair match for Falstaff," as Lincoln put it.

  "I was not at all pleased with her," said Lincoln, "but what could I do?"

  Mrs. Abell "was very anxious," to have Lincoln stick to his promise.

  But he wasn't. He admits he was "continually repenting the rashness" which had led him to make it, and dreaded the thought of marrying her as "an Irishman does the halter."

  So he wrote to Miss Owens, frankly and tactfully telling her how he felt and trying to get out of the engagement.

  Here is one of his letters. It was written in Springfield on May 7, 1837, and I believe it gives us a very good idea of what he wrote to Mary Todd.

  Friend Mary:

  I have commenced two letters to send you before this, both of which displeased me before I got half done, and so I tore them up. The first I thought wasn't serious enough, and the second was on the other extreme. I shall send this, turn out as it may.

  This thing of living in Springfield is rather a dull business after all—at least it is so to me. I am quite as lonesome here as [I] ever was anywhere in my life. I have been spoken to by but one woman since I've been here, and should not have been by her if she could have avoided it.

  I've never been to church yet, and probably shall not be soon. I stay away because I am conscious I should not know how to behave myself. I am often thinking of what we said of your coming to live at Springfield. I am afraid you would not be satisfied. There is a great deal of flourishing about in carriages here, which it would be your doom to see without sharing in it. You would have to be poor without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe you could bear that patiently? Whatever woman may cast her lot with mine, should anyone ever do so, it is my intention to do all in my power to make her happy and contented, and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in you.

  What you have said to me may have been in jest or I may have misunderstood it. If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise I much wish you would think seriously before you decide. For my part I have already decided. What I have said I will most positively abide by, provided you wish it. My opinion is you had better not do it. You have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more severe than you imagine. I know you are capable of thinking correctly on any subject; and if you deliberate maturely upon this before you decide, then I am willing to abide your decision.

  You must write me a good long letter after you get this. You have nothing else to do, and though it might not seem interesting to you after you have written it, it would be a good deal of company in this busy wilderness. Tell your sister I don't want to hear any more about selling out and moving. That gives me the hypo whenever I think of it.

  Yours, etc.

  Lincoln.

  So much for Lincoln's affair with Mary Owens. To return to his affair with Mary Todd: Speed tossed into the fire the letter which Lincoln had written to Miss Todd, and, turning to his friend and room-mate, said:

  "Now, if you have the courage of manhood, go see Mary yourself; tell her, if you do not love her, the facts, and that you

  will not marry her. Be careful not to say too much, and then leave at your earliest opportunity."

  "Thus admonished," Speed relates, "he buttoned his coat, and with a rather determined look started out to perform the serious duty for which I had just given him explicit directions."

  Herndon says:

  That night Speed did not go upstairs to bed with us, but under pretense of wanting to read, remained in the store below. He was waiting for Lincoln's return. Ten o'clock passed, and still the interview with Miss Todd had not ended. At length, shortly after eleven, he came stalking in. Speed was satisfied, from the length of Lincoln's stay, that his directions had not been followed.

  "Well, old fellow, did you do as I told you and as you promised?" were Speed's first words.

  "Yes, I did," responded Lincoln, thoughtfully, "and when I told Mary I did not love her, she burst into tears and almost springing from her chair and wringing her hands as if in agony, said something about the deceiver being himself deceived." Then he stopped.

  "What else did you say?" inquired Speed, drawing the facts from him.

  "To tell you the truth, Speed, it was too much for me. I found the tears trickling down my own cheeks. I caught her in my arms and kissed her."

  "And that's how you broke the engagement," sneered Speed. "You not only acted the fool, but your conduct was tantamount to a renewal of the engagement, and in decency you cannot back down now."

  "Well," drawled Lincoln, "if I am in again, so be it. It's done, and I shall abide by it."

  Weeks rolled on, and the marriage date drew near. Seamstresses were at work upon Mary Todd's trousseau. The Edwards mansion was freshly painted, the living-rooms were redecorated, the rugs renovated, and the furniture polished and shifted.

  But, in the meantime, a dreadful thing was happening to Abraham Lincoln. One is at a loss to know how to describe it. Profound mental depression is not like grief of the normal type; it is a dangerous illness affecting both mind and body.

  Lincoln was sinking day by day, now, into just such a state.

  His mind came very near being unbalanced; and it is doubtful whether he ever fully recovered from the effects of these awful weeks of unspeakable torture. Although he had definitely agreed to the marriage, his whole soul rebelled against it. Without realizing it, he was seeking a way of escape. He sat for hours in the room above the store, with no desire to go to his office or to attend the meetings of the legislature of which he was a member. Sometimes he arose at three o'clock in the morning, went down below, lighted a fire in the fireplace, and sat staring at it until daybreak. He ate less, and began to lose weight. He was irritable, avoided people, and would talk to no one.

  He had begun now to recoil with horror from his approaching marriage. His mind seemed to be whirling through a dark abyss, and he feared that he was losing his reason. He wrote a long letter to Dr. Daniel Drake of Cincinnati, the most eminent physician in the West, the head of the medical department of the College of Cincinnati, describing his case and asking the physician to recommend a course of treat
ment. But Dr. Drake replied that it would be impossible for him to do so without a personal examination.

  The marriage was set for January 1, 1841. The day dawned bright and clear, and the aristocracy of Springfield flourished about in sleighs, making their New Year's calls. Out of nostrils of horses issued breaths of steam, and the tinkle of tiny bells filled the air.

  At the Edwards mansion the bustle and hurry of final preparation went on apace. Delivery boys hastened to the back door with this article and that that had been ordered at the last minute. A special chef had been hired for the occasion. The dinner was to be cooked, not in an old iron oven on the hearth, but in a new invention that had just been installed—a cooking stove.

  The early evening of New Year's Day descended on the town, candles glowed softly, holly wreaths hung in the windows. The Edwards house was hushed with excitement, vibrant with expectation.

  At six-thirty happy guests began to arrive. At six forty-five came the minister, the ritual of the Church under his arm. The rooms were banked with plants, colorful with flowers. Huge fires crackled and blazed on the hearths. The place resounded with pleasant and friendly chatter.

  The clock struck seven. . . . Seven-thirty. Lincoln had not arrived. ... He was late.

  Minutes passed. . . . Slowly, inexorably, the grandfather's clock in the hallway ticked off a quarter of an hour. Half an hour. . . . Still there was no bridegroom. Going to the front door, Mrs. Edwards stared nervously down the driveway. What was wrong? Could he . . . ? No! Unthinkable! Impossible!

  The family withdrew. . . . Whisperings. ... A hurried consultation.

  In the next room, Mary Todd, bedecked with bridal veil, attired in silken gown, waited . . . waited . . . nervously toying with the flowers in her hair. She walked to the window constantly. She peered down the street. She couldn't keep her eyes off the clock. The palms of her hands grew wet, perspiration gathered on her brow. Another awful hour passed. He had promised . . . Surely . . .

  At nine-thirty, one by one, the guests withdrew, softly, won-deringly, and with embarrassment.

  When the last one had disappeared the bride-to-be tore her veil from her head, snatched the flowers from her hair, rushed sobbing up the stairway, and flung herself on the bed. She was rent with grief. Oh, God! what would people say? She would be laughed at. Pitied. Disgraced. Ashamed to walk the streets. Great waves of bitterness, of violence, swept over her. One moment, she longed to have Lincoln there to take her in his arms. The next, she longed to kill him for the hurt, for the humiliation, he had heaped upon her.

  Where was Lincoln? Had he met with foul play? Had there been an accident? Had he run away? Had he committed suicide? No one knew.

  At midnight men came with lanterns, and searching parties set out. Some explored his favorite haunts in town, others searched the roads leading out into the country.

  JLhe search continued all through the night, and shortly after daybreak Lincoln was found sitting in his office, talking incoherently. His friends feared he was losing his mind. Mary Todd's relatives declared that he was already insane. That was the way they explained his failure to show up at the wedding.

  Dr. Henry was called immediately. Lincoln threatened to commit suicide, so the doctor ordered Speed and Butler to watch over him constantly. His knife was taken from him now and kept from him just as it had been after the death of Ann Rutledge.

  Dr. Henry, wanting to keep his mind occupied, urged Lincoln to attend the sessions of the State Legislature. As the floor leader for the Whigs, he ought to have been there constantly. But the records show that he was present but four times in three weeks —and even then only for an hour or two. On January 19 John J. Hardin announced his illness to the House.

  Three weeks after he had fled from his wedding Lincoln wrote to his law partner the saddest letter of his life:

  I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be any better, I cannot tell. I awfully forbode that I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better, it seems to me.

  62

  As the late Dr. William E. Barton says in his well-known biography of Lincoln, this letter "can mean nothing else than that Abraham Lincoln was mentally distraught . . . that he had grave fears for his own sanity."

  He thought constantly of death, now, and longed for it and wrote a poem on suicide and had it published in the "Sangamo Journal."

  Speed feared that he was going to die; so Lincoln was taken to the home of Speed's mother, near Louisville. Here he was given a Bible and assigned a quiet bedroom looking out over a brook meandering through meadows to the forest a mile away. Each morning a slave brought Lincoln his coffee in bed.

  Mrs. Edwards, Mary's sister, says that Mary, "to set herself right and to free Mr. Lincoln's mind, wrote a letter to Mr. Lincoln, stating that she would release him from his engagement." But in releasing him, according to Mr. Edwards, "she left Lincoln the privilege of renewing it if he wished."

  But that was the last thing in the world that he wished. He never wanted to see her again. Even a year after Lincoln had fled from his wedding, his good friend James Matheny "thought Lincoln would commit suicide."

  For almost two years after the "fatal first of January," 1841, Lincoln ignored Mary Todd completely, hoping that she would forget him, praying that she would interest herself in some other man. But she did not, for her pride was at stake, her precious self-respect. She was determined to prove to herself and to those who had scorned and pitied her that she could and would marry Abraham Lincoln.

  And he was equally determined not to marry her.

  In fact, he was so determined that he proposed within a year to another girl. He was thirty-two at the time, the girl he proposed to was half that age. She was Sarah Rickard, the little sister of Mrs. Butler, at whose house Lincoln had been boarding for four years.

  Lincoln pleaded his case with her, arguing that since his name was Abraham and hers Sarah it was evident that they were meant for one another.

  But she refused him, because, as she later confessed in writing to a friend:

  I was young, only sixteen years old and I had not thought much about matrimony. ... I airway liked him as

  a friend but you Know his peculiar manner and his General deportment would not be likely to fascinate a Young Girl just entering into the society world. ... He seemed allmost like an older Brother being as it were one of my sister's family.

  Lincoln frequently wrote editorials for the local Whig paper, "The Springfield Journal"; and the editor, Simeon Francis, was one of his closest friends. Francis's wife, unfortunately, had never learned the fine art of minding her own business. Childless, over forty, she was the self-appointed match-maker of Springfield.

  Early in October, 1842, she wrote Lincoln, asking him to call at her home the following afternoon. That was a strange request, and he went, wondering what it could mean. When he arrived, he was ushered into the parlor; and there, to his astonishment, he saw Mary Todd sitting before him.

  What Lincoln and Mary Todd said, and how they said it, and what they did, that is not recorded. But of course the poor, tender-hearted fellow hadn't a chance to escape. If she cried— and of course she did—he probably delivered himself into her hands at once, and abjectly apologized for having gotten out of her hands.

  They met often after that, but always secretly and behind closed doors in the Francis home.

  At first Mary didn't let even her sister know that Lincoln was seeing her again.

  Finally, when her sister did find out, she asked Mary "why she was so secretive."

  And Mary replied "evasively that after all that had occurred, it was best to keep the courtship from all eyes and ears. Men and women of the world were uncertain and slippery, Mary continued, and if misfortune befell the engagement, all knowledge of it would be hidden from the world."

  In other words, to put it bluntly, having learne
d a little lesson, she resolved to keep even the courtship secret, this time, until she was positive that Lincoln would marry her.

  What technique did Miss Todd now employ?

  James Matheny declared that Lincoln often told him "that he was driven into the marriage, and that Miss Todd told him he was in honor bound to marry her."

  Herndon ought to have known if anybody did, and he said:

  To me it has always seemed plain that Mr. Lincoln married Mary Todd to save his honor, and in doing that he sacrificed his domestic peace. He had searched himself subjectively, introspectively, thoroughly: he knew he did not love her, but he had promised to marry her. The hideous thought came up like a nightmare. ... At last he stood face to face with the great conflict between honor and domestic peace. He chose the former, and with it years of self-torture, sacrificial pangs, and the loss forever of a happy home.

  Before he was willing to proceed, he wrote Speed, who had gone back to Kentucky, asking him if he had found happiness in his marriage.

  "Please answer quickly," Lincoln urged, "as I am impatient to know."

  Speed replied that he was far happier than he had ever expected to be.

  So the next afternoon, Friday, November 4, 1842, Lincoln, reluctantly and with an aching heart, asked Mary Todd to be his wife.

  She wanted to have the ceremony performed that very night. He hesitated, surprised, and a little frightened at the celerity with which events were moving. Knowing she was superstitious, he pointed out that the day was Friday. But, remembering what had happened before, she feared nothing now so much as delay. She was unwilling to wait even twenty-four hours. Besides, it was her birthday, her twenty-fourth birthday, so they hurried to Chatterton's jewelry store, bought a wedding-ring, and had these words engraved inside it: "Love is eternal."

  Late that afternoon Lincoln asked James Matheny to be his best man, saying, "Jim, I shall have to marry that girl."